ABSTRACT
The Italian circulation, review, and adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s seminal works on the rights of men and women – particularly A Vindication of the Rights of Woman just after its publication in Britain and translation in France,1 both in 1792 – reinforced the existing dialogue in Italy between languages, texts, and cultures by women for women. At its peak this dialogue constituted a collective, gendered, and European discourse. Furthermore, such cultural mediators and imitators of Wollstonecraft as Elisabetta Caminer Turra (1751-1796) and Rosa Califronia demonstrated that women also appropriated her ideas for the debate in Italy aimed at overturning conventions and at an innovative role for the woman intellectual. In particular, the presence of female salons in both Veneto (where Caminer Turra was a journalist as well as a learned salonnière) and Rome (where Califronia can be presumed to have frequented the famous coteries and assemblies) was decisive for the diffusion of radical ideas on women’s position in society, especially those of Wollstonecraft concerning women’s education.
